The Imperial Court was not a place of debate today; it was a kennel of panicked hounds. News had broken like a fever—spies, not one or two, but a nest of them, uncovered in the Zails territory and our bordering provinces.
The air tasted of betrayal and dust. I had already dispatched Gealton to the borderlands, a razor sent to cut out the infection, but the chaos left in his wake was a storm I now had to quell from the throne.
Whispers hissed like escaping steam, faces were etched with panic masquerading as counsel. It was undignified.
"SILENCE."
The word left my lips not as a request, but as a blade. It sliced through the cacophony, leaving a ringing, brittle quiet in its wake. Every gaze snapped to me, wide and wary.
"Explain," I commanded, my voice low but carrying to the farthest pillar. "What has turned this council of lords into a flock of startled crows?"
Duke Desth stepped forward, his composure a thin veneer over shared anxiety. "Your Majesty, grave news. The General… was found dead last night. An apparent riding accident on the northern cliffs."
The news landed, but it did not surprise. That bitter, ambitious man had made enemies as easily as breathing.
"Continue," I ordered, my tone giving no quarter for mourning a man I had never trusted.
It was Duke Nukerg who broke next, his fear curdling into insolence. "And how are we to manage the appointment of a new General when we failed to secure binding terms with the last?" he blustered, his words a clumsy, transparent attempt to lay the corpse of the old general's defiance at my feet. To question my foresight. My control.
The temperature in the hall seemed to drop ten degrees. I let the insult hang in the air for a suffocating moment, my eyes pinning him where he stood.
"The Lord of the Nukerg Dukedom," I said, each syllable a chip of ice. "Your grasp of both strategy and etiquette continues to astound me in its deficiency."
A collective inhale. Nukerg's face flushed a mottled red.
"It is true," I continued, my gaze sweeping the assembled nobles, forcing each to meet the cold fire in mine. "Our relationship with the late General was… adversarial. But tell me," I leaned forward slightly, the movement predatory in its stillness, "was his stubbornness my failure? Do you hold some childish belief that I possess a witch's wand to twist the wills of grown men to my whim? That loyalty is not earned, but conjured?"
No one dared answer.
The arrogant bluster of moments before had evaporated, leaving behind the sharp, acrid smell of shame and fear. The sight was perversely satisfying. These men, who so often measured my worth in whispered doubts, were now confronted with the hollow echo of their own helplessness.
"I, too, hope for a future less fraught than the present," I said, my voice softening into something no less dangerous. "I hope for a General whose name I can hear without tasting bile. A partner in defense, not an obstacle to it."
It was a hope I voiced for them, but it was a vow I made to myself. The next name that filled this hall with the title of General would be one I could shape a future with, for better or worse.
Then, as if summoned by the very thought, the great doors at the end of the hall groaned open. A messenger in the stark, travel-stained livery of a military outrider strode in, the sound of his boots a grim drumbeat in the hush.
He did not bow to the lords; he walked the long aisle until he reached the foot of the dais and knelt, presenting a sealed scroll on a velvet pillow.
An Invitation.
The Chamberlain took it, broke the seal, and his voice, usually so monotone, held a tremor as he read the contents aloud to the silent, frozen court.
"By the accord of the Four Sovereign Nations… a Ceremony of Ascension is hereby summoned… to formally install the newly appointed General of the Armies… to be held at the Frontier Keep of Val Rost… at the week's end…"
He finished, and the silence that followed was deeper than before, heavy with the unspoken name we all now knew.
The finality of it was a thunderclap in a cloudless sky. There would be no discussion, no political maneuvering. The machinery of empires had turned without us.
The last day of this week. I would travel to that stark keep. And there, I would come face to face with the new power in my realm.
I would come face to face with my brother.